A Miami Congressman Adamantly Defends Isolating Cuba

As more Cuban-Americans find ways to engage with Cuba — through travel, helping families with new businesses, and now business training — they have increasingly come into conflict with Cuban-American lawmakers who insist that isolation, through the United States trade embargo, is the best and only acceptable approach when dealing with Cuba.

Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, the Republican congressman from Miami, has been a leader among the pro-embargo constituency for years, serving in Congress since 2003. His aunt, Mirta, was Fidel Castro’s first wife, leading many to argue that the divide between Cuba and the United States over the embargo is, at its roots, a family dispute. But Mr. Díaz-Balart argues that his position is steeped in principle, and that despite the recent changes in Cuba — allowing for more private enterprise and travel — American policy should remain focused on politics and human rights, rather than on ways to use private enterprise as a way to help move the island away from communism and authoritarian rule.

Q. and A.

My story is about Cuban Americans who are going to Cuba, and not just to see their homes, or just to travel or bring items for their families. These are people who are prominent Cuban-Americans who are starting nonprofits, who are doing many different things on the island, from supporting artists to training entrepreneurs, to supporting people after the hurricane. My question is: Do you think this is good or bad for Cuba?

Well, it is interesting, remember what the policy has always been, and those of us who support the policy and have worked on the policy have always pushed for — number one is to deny funds to the regime, i.e. through the sanctions, and that includes for example tourism on businesses, because as you know the hotels and everything else is basically run by the regime, it is in partnership with the regime. At the same time it helps the internal opposition, it helps the internal society and the opposition to the point where we actually put money — when President Bush launched it was $45 million [in 2008] — to do that directly, and so we have always supported helping the internal opposition, that is not new. That has always been the two-part policy, which is to deny funds to the regime and those funds are either through credits or massive tourism, which is the biggest revenue source, or would be the biggest revenue source. And try to help the internal opposition. And it’s either folks who are willing to help the internal opposition, we have always been supportive of that, but what we do not want is folks to be doing things that are helping fund the regime, which actually those funds go to help further repress the Cuban people.

A lot of these things, like Cuba Emprende, are not specifically targeted to the opposition; it’s targeted to average Cubans, trying to give them some assistance as they start small businesses.

Yeah, again, what we should be doing is helping the families of political prisoners who have a hard time, you know, eating, because as you know, you depend on the regime for everything and so obviously our emphasis, what we have always supported, what I have always supported, is helping the internal opposition, whether it is the families of political prisoners, whether it is the independent labor unions, the independent libraries, you know, that sort of folks who are the ones who need more help than anybody else. And so again, that is what we have always emphasized and we have always supported. So, if there are groups that are doing that, then I welcome it.

You don´t think it is necessary to help average Cubans? Just the formal opposition? I mean a lot of Cubans have a hard time finding what they need.

Yeah, but everyone has a hard time because we have a regime that has been there now for over half a century, so the question is how can we better help the Cuban people free themselves from this regime that has been there for over half a century. And the best way to do that, is again, deny funds to the regime in any way we can, in the best way we can, and again, to help the internal opposition who are the ones, by the way, who are struggling the worst and the most. Right now, I am sure you are aware of Antúnez, whose wife may be pregnant [Jorge Luis García Pérez, who is known as Antúnez]. They can´t even go to the doctor and they have been harassed ever since they returned and detained since they returned. So, if you really are interested, if folks are really interested in helping, and then you start helping those who are the ones who run the forefront of the liberation movement. You know, you help the Mandelas and their families, and you help the Vaclac Havels and you help them.

Not emphasizing that, I think, is not understand the reality of Cuba which is, you have Mandelas and Sharanskys — you know there are thousands of those in Cuba and that is what I continue to believe we should continue to emphasize, the help to civil society and the internal opposition. Not to be something to just in essence, take away the pressure take off or release the pressure, from the Castro regime.

Do you acknowledge that the views of the Cuban-American community have changed and that there are far more people that are interested in engagement than when you first got into politics? You have 400,000 Cuban Americans who are going to Cuba every year.

There are 400,000 Cuban-American trips going back to Cuba every year, and as The New York Times did a story only a year and a half ago, a lot of those are folks who are going 12 to 15 times a year, so the number of trips has increased dramatically because of the loosening of the sanctions, the unilateral loosening of the sanctions under Obama’s administration. But unless what the NYT said is absolutely false, which you guys did a story saying that a number of those folks are going over a dozen times a year, you know, really what are those numbers?

But do you acknowledge that the views have changed?

If that is the case, then why is it that there is not one Cuban-American elected official, state or local level or federal level, who does not support the sanctions, and does not support the embargo? Including Joe Garcia.

But there are a lot of people in the Cuban-American community, leaders at the business and political level, who are having a more nuanced conversation — it is not so black and white. Let me give you an example. Cuba Emprende would like find a way to invest; they want to create incubators so they can find and help Cuban businesses. All of this is separate from the Cuban state. This is the beginning of civil society. They don’t have the ability to do that because the embargo prohibits that. Would you be willing to allow investment? I know the Cubans still don’t allow that, but from the American side would you be willing to support that? And if not, why not?

Because as I said before, because what we have to do, the question that has to be asked is: Is that something that will help free people from over half a century of totalitarian dictatorship? In other words, does the Chinese model, you know, the fascist Chinese model, is that the solution for Cuba, where you can invest in Cuba like we do in China, with no internal opposition, with no political parties, with no independent labor unions legalized, with no freedom of press, available and legal. There are folks who would like to have China 90 miles away from the United States, as fascist, totalitarian regime where big business can invest and make money with no labor unions, with no freedom of press, with no political parties, with no freedom, which is why in the law, which has strong bipartisan support in the House, in those laws it says that for those sanctions to go away, three conditions have to be met.

One the one hand, freeing all the political prisoners, free the Mandelas and the Havels and the Walesas of Cuba. Number two is allowing all those freedoms that I just mentioned, that is in the law. Freedom of press, labor unions etc. and then start the process towards free elections — and then all sanctions would go away.

So the question is which one of those conditions do the Cuban people not deserve? Before, precisely U.S. businesses go and invest, i.e. the Chinese fascist model. There are only two answers, two solutions, two possible futures for the Cuban people with the Castro brothers’ regime, one is going to Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, you name it, places where there have been dictatorships and now they have democratic societies, or, yes, the Chinese, Vietnamese model, which is a fascist dictatorship where you have foreign investment and yet the people are still not free. Those are the two options and if you ask me which one the internal opposition in Cuba supports, the vast majority of them, I can refer you to two statements made by the internal opposition saying: ‘Hey, what we want is freedom and therefore do not lift sanctions unilaterally.’

The only thing that is required for the sanctions to go away are those three conditions.

O.K. so on Twitter we took a bunch of suggested questions, and somebody suggested that I ask you this: “Do you think the embargo has been effective in achieving its goals?” You are talking about what might happen if the embargo is dropped, you would create China, but has the embargo in its five decades achieved its goals?

That question has to be asked both ways, to be honest. There are around 200 plus countries in the world, I believe but two or three have relations with the Castro regime, I believe most of them do business with the Castro regime, Canada, being one of them, Mexico, where you are at being another one they do business there, tourism and everything else. Has that, has doing business with the vast majority of the countries of the world, has that freed the Cuban people? Has that done something to free the Cuban people?

You know United Colors of Benetton are in Cuba. Has that freed the Cuban people? No, what it has done is just the opposite. It has allowed the revenue for the regime in order to continue to oppress its people. It is the same argument about South Africa, actually. Remember the whole South Africa thing? “Oh no, we are doing business to help the blacks, that is why we are doing business.”

It wasn’t to help the blacks, it was to do business with slave labor. And not until the world got serious, particularly the United States got serious, did that regime, a very wealthy country, have to change.

But let’s talk about what Cubans want. The Cubans that I’ve talked to — some of them are activist, real opponents, and some of them have been put under a lot of pressure by the government — they live very difficult lives. I said to a particular young artist, who was basically an up-and-coming activist, what would you like to tell Cuban-Americans who are thinking about getting involved, to Cuban-American lawmakers. And he said: “The thing with the Cuban-American community is that for a long time they have only looked at the end point, they have only looked at those three conditions being met. What they don’t realize is that this is a long process and there are a lot of steps to be taken, and there needs to be more activity to do that because we do not have the resources to be able to do that.” Why is that not convincing to you?

Let me just tell you for example about Yaremis Flores, or Danilo Maldonado or Navarro, or Angel Moya, and Dr. Hilda Molina, who just recently did a video on YouTube by the way, saying, “Please do not lift the sanctions right now.”

Do they receive money from the American government?

No, no they don’t.

They don’t receive any democracy support?

Not that I know of. I don’t know; that I don’t know. That is a very good question. But how about the head of the Ladies in White, Las Damas de Blanco, who has been very clear about that, or talk to Antúnez, and remember when there was the same group of these guys who wanted to do business and they did a letter and got 75 people who I greatly respect, because what we want is for the Cuban people is for them to be able to expose whatever opinions they want, they got 75 people saying, “You should lift the sanctions.” And then there was a letter of 500-plus known opposition leaders and other, who at great risk wrote a letter saying, “Do not lift the sanctions.”

So look this argument that you are telling me, which is a very good argument, is not new. And with all due respect, your newspaper has been writing the same thing since 1972, how the Cuban community has changed, how the vote has changed, I can send you a million of those.

That is an absolute falsehood what you just mentioned, because even in that push poll that a group of folks that has been the largest and strongest advocates for unilateral lifting sanctions forever, regardless to any conditions, regardless of the repression, that poll states, when the American people are told that there is repression in Cuba, then the majority of American people support keeping the sanctions just when they are informed one thing, that there is repression. Now, if they were further informed of the fact that they hold an American hostage, if they were further informed that they are helping a North Korea skirt their sanctions by that ship that was stopped in Panama, if they were further informed that they are holding American fugitives, including cop killers, that numbers goes to about 70 percent.

So that is absolutely not the case, and the reason I am telling about all these articles that have come out is because there has been this wishful thinking by those that have been trying to either do business with slave labor, with no freedom of press, with no labor unions, with all those things that I just told you about, they have been saying this ad nauseam for decades and it has always been proven to be false. Show me the one American member of local government, state government or Congress who opposes the sanctions, who opposes the embargo and I can show you the articles in The New York Times, and it’s not only the NYT, talking about how the community has changed, since 1972. And you are telling me that Cuban-Americans supported lifting the sanctions during the Reagan years? Really? So which one has been factually incorrect? What your newspaper has been reporting or what the facts are showing.

Which one? You are telling me about a poll, but here is the poll that matters. We have elections every two years, show me where Cuban-Americans get elected who are against the embargo? Show me.

Again, you are oversimplifying in terms of making it the embargo, yes or no. As I said, what you have here is a lot of people who are saying, “Hey, is there a way to adjust it?” You in 2011 tried to insert language into a spending bill that would have cut off travel or made it much more difficult for Cuban-Americans to go Cuba to travel. Do you feel most Cuban-Americans would welcome that? The cutting off travel to Cuba?

There is absolutely no doubt that when folks are confronted with the options, which is unilaterally lifting the sanctions, asking nothing in return, which is what the proponents of lifting the sanctions want, or, condition the sanctions on the three conditions that are in the law, there is overwhelming support, by the way, not only of Cuban-Americans, of the American people.

Beyond the politics, let’s talk about practicality. A lot of people I talked to said this is an issue of trust, and the system that you set up creates nothing, very little interaction except with dissidents, and then suddenly a flood of activity when these conditions are met. Do you think that the dissidents have legitimacy in Cuba, do you think that the assistance that they receive and the attention that you give them helps them have legitimacy?

I think what gives them legitimacy is not any assistance that they get, what gives them legitimacy is what they do within the island. Look, the Ladies in White, who on Sundays they walk to the church and they get dragged in the streets, and there are YouTube videos to show this, that is what gives them legitimacy, not what everybody else does. It is what they do. Antúnez has spent 17 years in prison, I am sorry, but what legitimacy does he need? Legitimacy has nothing to do with what foreign assistance, with what different embassies allow them to use the Internet or not, that does not give them the credibility, what gives them the credibility is who they are and what their actions have been. And there are thousands of people who are standing up demanding freedom and they are suffering horrible consequences for that.

In Marc Frank’s new book on Cuba, he talks about the “gray zone,” people who are neither dissidents, nor supporters of the government, and what I see is a lot of people saying “we need to work within that zone.” And I don’t hear you saying that is a good idea.

No, well, look, again here is another fallacy. The United States, i.e. mostly through Cuban-Americans, gives more humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people than the rest of the world combined. So that does not hold water. In essence, there is assistance going directly to the Cuban people, not only to the ones that are known to be the opposition leaders and the opposition movement but to Cubans, and it has been going on like this for years.

But do you support that? There are lots of people and families that are very very strong opponents to the embargo, who give money to the Catholic Church in Cuba.

Yeah, and the Catholic Church, summons assistance and do really good things, to help Cubans survive that horrible system. However, as you well know, Cardinal Ortega, who to say was controversial is an understatement, a lot of the folks in Cuba call him Colonel Ortega, has not been frankly very supportive, and you know, historically the Cuban church, has not been very good with Cuba, going way back to the war of independence. Unlike the case of Poland, or Nicaragua, where the church has been very very strong, in the support of their people, in Cuba, the hierarchy unfortunately, has not been. Now, there are great religious leaders who are extremely important, and doing a great job in trying to help the Cubans survive and we have always been very supportive of that. But again, to the misnomer, there is a lot of assistance going to the Cuban people, humanitarian, what we try to do, is try to make sure it does not go directly to the government. That is what the sanctions are all about.

In terms of travel, you have been an opponent of widening travel by Cuban-Americans to the island, recently when Alfy Fanjul went down you criticized him for going to his house. Do you think Cuban-Americans shouldn’t have that right?

I criticized him for statements about, I mean, I am going to look at this as a regular investor in essence, in other words, not focusing on the reality of the Cuban people .

He was very clear that would only happen under the right conditions. And you also criticized him for crying in his own house, saying he should have been crying for the dissidents. Do you think Cuban-Americans have the right to go back and find some way to reconcile themselves with what has happened?

The issue of property, that is for a free Cuba to decide. What I support are efforts to help the Cuban people liberate itself from 55 years of a repressive dictatorship. That is what I support and that is what should be the emphasis, and what our efforts should be focused on.

I have never criticized Cuban-Americans for visiting relatives. I have criticized Cuban-Americans when they go down there to look for investment opportunities with the Castro regime and with those conditions.

But what about investment opportunities, you know, in a house or in a private business, these are things that are separate from the state but they have to pay taxes. Is that too close to supporting the state for you?

Because right now who would you be buying it from? Would you be buying it from legitimate donors? Or would you be buying it from the regime that stole those properties from legitimate actors? It is also bad business sense because as you know in every country in international law there is something about dealing with stolen property, so buying properties that were stolen, confiscated by that regime, you are dealing with stolen property.

But not just the property but the businesses.

Same thing. Again, all these issues that you are telling me about are the same arguments in favor of doing businesses with the apartheid regime in South Africa, which I think is one of the really sad points in U.S. history, is the fact, I am a huge Reagan supporter, but I think that was a huge huge blunder on his part when Congress supported sanctions against South Africa to stop doing business with the apartheid regime and President Reagan vetoed that, and Congress overruled that veto, which I think was a very good thing for Congress to do. And the same arguments that you are telling me right now are the same arguments that were used in order to justify doing business with the apartheid regime.

But you are confusing two things, you are talking about the big businesses that are tied to government — in this case it would be the Cuban military that runs just about every business, as I have written — but what we are talking about here is small private businesses — for a lot of Cuban-Americans see this as the beginning of civil society. What you are saying is that these small businesses are in fact tied to the apartheid regime.

No, what I am telling you is that even the “paladares,” and there are some that are legitimate, that there are small businesses that are run by Cubans, but even the ones that are constantly talked about in the press, a lot of them are actually run by the regime. So you can’t take away the fact that the regime has been there for 55 years, controls the entire financial structure in Cuba, decides who can open a private restaurant in Cuba or not, and if you tend to be that you are someone unfavorable of the regime it would be very difficult to do that, that is just the reality of life there.

So here is the question, do we then, unilaterally lift sanctions not asking for something in return. And if we are going to ask for something in return, what should that be? I think there are some basic freedoms that have to be demanded in return for lifting the sanctions: freedom of press, otherwise you have no freedom, whether we like it or not, whether we bitch or not about the press; independent labor unions, and as a Republican that sounds strange; political parties, freeing the political prisoners. Or do we go there and invest and go there with our flipflops to the beaches while Cubans are being held in prisons just for their beliefs?

Raúl Castro has released a bunch of political prisoners, opening up to private enterprise has brought in some freedom, there is more discussion in Cuba about the future of the country than there has been in decades. I mean, there are signs, according to some people, that the country is making steps toward those things.

Well, it is interesting when you say that, but if you listen to the folks, whether is Yoani Sanchez or all the folks that have been traveling that were recently allowed to travel outside of Cuba, they will tell you that the changes are not real, that they are just cosmetic, and just a way for the Castro brothers to try to keep themselves in power.

Can’t it be both an opening and an effort to keep themselves in power? Is it possible that it is not either/or?

Here is the issue, during the Carter administration they released I think 1,200 political prisoners, and then they took them back to prison. Now they released the 75 and then they rearrested hundreds more. I don’t know if you aware that last month was a record number of detentions. There were eleven hundred detentions in Cuba, last month that is the change we can believe in. Those are the reforms that Raúl Castro has been imposing, increased repression.

I was there two weeks ago. There was more surveillance on the streets than I have ever seen and I have been going to Cuba for 15 years. But somebody said to me that is a sign of insecurity, a sign that these changes are creating a space for things they are not familiar with.

What changes? That Cubans can buy an automobile that is the equivalent of 250,000 U.S.D. for a Peugeot? That change? There are cosmetic changes according to every single person

If you would go to Cuba I would send you to a couple of places where the changes are quite visible, and whether it is the Ultimo Jueves discussions that happens every last Thursday of the month, or Atelier de Paladar, run by a woman that was one of the first students of Cuba Emprende that is doing very well. It is a clearly privately owned; she worked for 15 years to make this work and she is supporting dozens of families with their businesses, and this kind of thing just didn’t exist 10 years ago.

Well except that Castro has done this in the past, again. In the past, he would open up, remember, the special period, they did this then, they would open up, allow for more investment or certain business to be run or taxi cabs, and then Castro conveniently pulls it out again, and this is all at the whim of the Castro brothers. That is the gist of the problem, all of these things, whether is that the Castro brothers allow a group of people to travel outside of the country, which by the way is not a such gift, it is a recognized universal free human right.

Except for Americans who want to go to Cuba … under the embargo, they don’t have that right

There is a difference and we can talk about that but I think to equate what the Castro regime does to Cubans, and what the U.S. does is frankly ...

I am not equating, but some would argue that Cubans, now with the new travel law, have an easier time getting to the United States than Americans have getting to Cuba.

Well, some would argue that with the loosening of Obama regulations it has been pretty easy to get to Cuba and has been abused rather extensively and I can show you examples of that.

Speaking more in terms of the future, what is your vision for how this works? In five or ten years.

Here is how it works. The Castro brothers are not going to be there forever because they are going to die, one is, what, 88 and the other is 83, and not even in good health, so the question is this. Do we unilaterally give that regime normalized relations, unilaterally, with no conditions?

Yes, but when they are gone, what happens?

When those conditions are met, sanctions go away. And that is what we have to always keep an eye on, which is what the Cuban people deserve is the same freedoms that we have here or that they have in Spain — those are the freedoms the Cuban people aspire for, that is what they demand, that is why they are hitting the streets for, that is why they are serving prison times for, that is why they get beat and dragged in the streets. That is what Damas de Blanco are demanding, freedom. And what is the best way to get there? By unilaterally, giving the regime billions of dollars asking nothing in return or conditioning the billions of dollars that normalization would be on basic freedoms.

I understand but my question is, say those conditions are met. This is personal for you; your parents were born in Cuba. Say the conditions are met, what do you do? This issue gets caught up in ideas.

I am a member of Congress and I am going to run for one more time at least so ...

But do you go back to your house, do you experience some of that catharsis?

No, no, no, absolutely not. No, no, what I do, all I aspire for is for the Cuban people to regain their freedom, end of story. Nothing else. No more, no less.

No properties and by the way we are not a wealthy family, so we didn’t have properties anyways, but no dreams of owning anything because we didn’t and we don’t But that is not an issue. What I aspire is for the Cuban people to be free. Totally free, not like in a totalitarian fascist state like China, to be free. Cuban people deserve no less. That is what I aspire to and when it comes to Cuba that is what I work for.

On a totally human level you have never had doubts and said “I really want to head back and see it or even just the idea of I want to go back and understand?"’

First of all, they wouldn’t let me in because Chris Smith and Frank Wolf, have been trying to get to Cuba for over a decade and they are not allowed in by the Cuban regime

You are a Republican, you support private enterprise, what everyone is talking about is not government but some other form of assistance that helps private enterprise.

Again, what you are saying is that it is the China model that allows for U.S. investment, like we did in there, which has not been really good for human rights.

I am not talking about China. The ideas I hear are microloans for some guy that has a restaurant and five employees; that is not China. Under American law, the embargo, that is illegal.

Correct.

Because what we want to do is do things that would help the Cuban people free themselves from that regime. So in other words if we can help to break the communications jam, the information jam, if we can help through cellphones like the Bush administration did to facilitate cellphones going into Cuba, if we can get radio broadcast and TV broadcast and printers and CD burners, and that kind of stuff, that is absolutely legal and encouraged. What is illegal is investing in state-sponsored, state-owned, state-controlled enterprise. And you mention the small paladares, the small little tokens that the regime allows certain Cubans to have that I guess we should be very grateful for. But I will be grateful when the Cuban people enjoy freedom.

To open their businesses without the government interfering and deciding who can open who cannot, when they are allowed to have open and free press and opinions without getting arrested or killed in detention. That is what the goal has to be, not “migajas,” not crumbs, but true real freedom.